


Troubleshooting

by MonstrousRegiment



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bday fic, Gen, GooberFeesh, bruce is mild, clint is Katniss, did you know theres an AO3 tag that is literally 'this is STUPID', i did my best i swear, i didn't, i don't know what this fic even is, i tried man really, it makes no sense, steve needs to stay away from microwaves, tony is insane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 08:55:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonstrousRegiment/pseuds/MonstrousRegiment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It bothers Tony that Bruce can't choose to suit up or sit this one down like the rest of them. He tries to help, he really does, but then Tony will always be Tony, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>But it bothered him, and one thing that could be said about Tony was that he didn’t put up with the things that bothered him for very long at all. Excepting the case of Nick Fury, whom he was forced to put up with, because he just couldn’t get rid of him. For one thing, you couldn’t kill him, and if you could, theoretically, manage to kill him, the bastard would probably just rise from amongst the dead and come at you. With a zombie bazooka, probably. </i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>A zombie Nick Fury with a bazooka was about as terrifying as a horror story could get. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Troubleshooting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GooberFeesh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GooberFeesh/gifts).



> I honestly... I don't even know, Feeshy. I swear I tried. I hope you at least have a laugh with it. 
> 
> Happy birthday!

In the grand scheme of things, it comparatively probably meant little. That didn’t mean it hadn’t stuck Tony right where it hurt, like a spear to the chest, like a punch to the gut. 

It wasn’t that it kept him awake at night—because, well, it was rare enough you caught Tony Stark sleeping at night, unless either Pepper or Cap happened to swing by the workshop and either push him or drag him, respectively, out and up to his bed. 

But it bothered him, and one thing that could be said about Tony was that he didn’t put up with the things that bothered him for very long at all. Excepting the case of Nick Fury, whom he was forced to put up with, because he just couldn’t get rid of him. For one thing, you couldn’t kill him, and if you could, theoretically, manage to kill him, the bastard would probably just rise from amongst the dead and come at you. With a zombie bazooka, probably. 

A zombie Nick Fury with a bazooka was about as terrifying as a horror story could get. 

A lot of things bothered Tony, though he wouldn’t even consider telling anyone about them unless, again, Pepper or Cap happened to decide they felt like dragging a confession out of him, and that happened rarely enough. Pepper was busy with the company these days, what with the destruction of Stark Tower and its reconstruction under-way, and Cap was still struggling with adapting to this brave new world. And his new, most despicable foe: touch-screen cellphones. 

Something was bothering Tony that night, which is basically why he was locked down there in his workshop disassembling the perfectly functional engine of a vintage Gran Torino, risking life and limb because if Clint Eastwood ever heard of it he’d probably come storming down there and put a bullet through Tony or even worse—give him the Evil Eye. 

“Sir, Doctor Banner is requesting entrance to the workshop,” JARVIS announced, pulling up a screen next to Tony’s head to show him Bruce, standing awkwardly at the blindex door. 

Tony blinked. Bruce had never ventured down this far, normally choosing to stick to the upper lab levels, the common floor or his own residence floor. Bruce was very big on privacy, and careful to the point of paranoia of not walking into places he might not be wanted. 

“Let him in,” he said, straightening from his crouch and wiping his hands on the thighs of his jeans. 

The door chimed and unlocked. After a brief hesitation, Bruce pushed it, carefully, as he did everything, and peeked in. 

“Tony?”

“Yeah, I’m here, come in,” Tony stood up, gesturing with his hand. 

Bruce stepped inside and held onto the door, making sure it didn’t slam closed. He waited until the latch had secured before letting go of it. 

“It’s got, you know, it doesn’t slam, it’s got a safety spring.”

Bruce’s mouth quirked. “I could have figured that.”

Tony shrugged, “But thanks anyway. So what brings you down here, doc?”

Bruce did that thing where he put his hands beneath his arms, so as to better make sure he didn’t touch anyone’s stuff and accidentally break it. It made Tony want to shove things off tables. 

“I just noticed I haven’t see you in a couple of days,” Bruce looked around curiously. “It’s been pretty quiet around here lately.”

“I guess even the villainy of the world is still stunned after Doom’s latest stunt, huh?” 

“Giant meat-eating bunnies,” Bruce blinked. “I never saw it coming.”

“No one saw it coming, JARVIS didn’t see it coming and I programmed him to predict the future. Though admittedly that never did quite work out. Maybe I should reboot him.”

“I predict electrocution should you attempt it, sir,” JARVIS interjected. 

“It works on and off,” Tony amended. 

“Only you’d program your AI to be the watered-down version of a Dahlek, Tony.”

“I prefer to think of him as a cyberman.”

“Delete, delete, delete, delete,” JARVIS said coldly. 

Bruce laughed, quietly, as he did everything. 

“What are you up to, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I was just gutting a Gran Torino.”

Bruce gave him a weird look, “Why would you do that?”

“Because I can?”

“That doesn’t sound like a good reason to fix what isn’t broken, Tony.”  
“I hate it when you argue with reason,” Tony rolled his eyes. 

Bruce chuckled. “Well Pepper mentioned you haven’t been out of here in about two days, and it’s nearly dinner time, so I thought I’d try my hand at dragging you upstairs.”

“Is Cap busy?”

“Steve is out with Loki again,” Bruce said, with the tones of someone who did not understand the ways of the Universe. “Thor’s sulking, as he tends to whenever Loki doesn’t murder someone who tries to be friendly with him.”

Tony made a face. “Steve’s trying to get his balls frozen or something. Did you say dinner? Did I hear you say you’re cooking? Waffles?”

Bruce gave him an amused look, “Waffles for dinner, Tony?” the he paused. “If it’ll get you out of here, I can do that.”

“Deal.”

They then absconded to the kitchen, where Bruce revealed he had pretty amazing cooking skills. Clint waltzed by and got his own plate, even, ion what Tony loudly argued was just a waste of good will and unwarranted effort. It followed a discussion of all the ways Clint could kill Tony in his sleep— _Clint’s_ sleep—and how Tony could make Clint’s bow remotely detonate— _probably_ —and how even if he died, the Hulk would probably avenge him because he liked Iron Man much more than he did Clint.

“Ah, I don’t think the big guy likes anyone,” Bruce said meekly. 

“He totally likes me best,” Tony said firmly. “He saved me.” 

“Just because if he didn’t we’d have to dig your metal-wrapped carcass out of a twenty feet deep crater,” Clint scoffed. 

“Now Katniss, don’t be stingy—“

“I can’t believe you read that book, man—“

“Me? _You_ know who I’m talking about.”

Bruce sat back and sipped at his sensible tea. 

“Are you eating breakfast food for dinner?” Natasha walked in, arching a fire-red eyebrow at all of them in her customarily disapproving way. Mostly she swung between looking neutral and being strongly unimpressed, unless Clint was being an idiot, in which case she mostly looked put-upon, like a big sister dealing with her idiot kid brother. To be fair, most of them felt that way about Clint. 

“Breakfast food is good at any time of day,” said Tony. 

Natasha gave him a bored look and crossed over to the fridge to get a bottle of water. It was entirely possible Natasha subsisted off the blood of innocent men. Tony had ever seen her consume food the one time at that shawarma joint, and she had looked indifferent, which was pretty much her default. 

Once breakfast/dinner (brinner?) had been had, Tony made to retreat back to his workshop, but thought the better of it. Instead he convinced Bruce to come up to the penthouse with him and share a glass of soda—Bruce never drank alcohol—in the curving balcony overlooking the city. 

“I don’t think Harlem is such a bad loss,” Tony was saying. “I mean, Harlem. You could have done worse.”

“I don’t think the people living there would agree with that reasoning.”

“Who lives in Harlem?” Tony wrinkled his nose, purposefully obnoxious in that way that made Steve give him a long-suffering look. “Anyway, I bet there are tons of stuff that would make _anyone_ go in a murderous rampage down there. Cab drivers, for one.” 

“It’s a huge cultural center, Tony,” Bruce saw down in the steps of the Iron Man suit platform. “And I’ve uh, learned to not take cabs, or the subway.”

“You must walk a lot.” 

“I like walking,” Bruce shrugged. “It lets me think.”

Tony sat down next to him and stretched his legs, swirling the scotch in his glass thoughtfully. 

“Are you still researching?” he asked softly. 

Bruce sighed. “I don’t think there’s much more research to be done, Tony. It is what it is.”

Tony gave him a look, “This coming from a scientist, Banner?”

“Tony,” Bruce spread his hands, mindful of his glass. “I’ve lived with this for a very long time. I’ve seen into every possibility, every chance, every… you know. This is what my life is.”

“But,” Tony thought about it for a moment. He wanted to argue, but he didn’t want to trigger an episode. Bruce hated having spontaneous episodes, and the Hulk unleashed in the middle of New York unexpectedly would not be pleasant. “Maybe some sort of device, something?”

“Like what, Tony?” Bruce gestured at the dull glow of the arc reactor through the fabric of Tony’s shirt. “I don’t have a heart problem like you do.” He shrugged. “You can’t fix me, or upgrade me.”

“You’re gonna tell me I can’t cut the wire?” Tony scowled at him. 

Bruce sighed. “Tony, you don’t have to save me. It’s okay.” 

“Yeah? How come everyone else gets to be saved and you don’t? I’m just saying, fairness, and justice, and stuff, and also I sort of want to look into Gamma radiation now.”

“Only because I said not to bother, right?” Bruce gave him a wary look. 

“Are you implying I have the childish tendency to rebel against authority?”

Bruce’s eyes flicked away and back. “No? I’m not _implying_.”

“I’m deeply and regretfully offended.”

“Yeah? Your ‘deeply and regretfully offended’ face looks like your amused one.”

“I only have the once, don’t judge me,” Tony waved a finger in Bruce’s face. “Anyway, I mean. I’ll stop if you want me to, but yeah, I’d like to do some research on it.” 

Bruce’s shoulders rose and slumped. “I can’t stop you, Tony. Just don’t get your hopes up.”

“Me? Never. I work off fact and scientific learning curves.”

“For all the good it’ll do you,” Bruce muttered exhaled slowly, getting to his feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Night,” Tony watched him go, draining the last of his scotch without haste. 

It bothered Tony, that all of them could chose to suit up and go chase the villains or chose instead to duck this one out, but Bruce just reacted and _had_ to. And yeah, sure Bruce had about ten hundred ways to control himself, but when he got triggered, there was really just no helping it. 

So Tony brought to bear the not negligible weight of his intellect to this particular problem. The solution did not make itself readily available. This meant, of course, that he got so obsessed with it that being Iron Man became rather a second thought, a periphery concern. 

“Look, Tony, I understand,” Steve said, at the close of the first month. “But you need to understand maybe this is the one thing you can’t change, ok?”

Tony spun his chair around to face him, incredulous. “What about you and your efforts to reform Loki and bring him to the Avengers? When are you going to stop with _that_ insanity?”

Steve blinked, “It’s not exactly comparable, Tony. I’m trying to get Loki to stop attempting to murder us every other week. The Hulk is difficult to manage, sure, but he’s all in all a good, um. Creature.”

Tony arched a brow. “Creature?”

“Man?” Steve scratched the back of his neck. “Person.”

Steve dragged a hand down his face and dragged the closes chair over to sit in its edge, rigidly straight. It was the pose he sued whenever he was about to go on a subject he really wished he didn’t have to go on, like all those times he told Tony he thought he ought to drink less and sleep more. This nearly always ended in a sorry time being had by everyone.

“Tony,” he started, hesitant. “I think you’re projecting.”

Tony stilled. He sighed and rubbed his face with both hands. 

“Steve, you don’t get it,” he said softly. “And you know, that’s alright. It’s better, even. I wouldn’t want you to on your own, because than that would mean you went through it, and I like to think you didn’t. But it’s—I know what it’s like, ok? Not seeing a way out, reaching the light at the end of the tunnel only to realize that fuck, it’s a light-bulb and the tunnels goes on behind it.”

He paused, spreading his hands in his lap to look at his open palms, at the skin of his fingers covered in calluses from wrenches and screwdrivers and things he didn’t really need to use, not with JARVIS at hand. 

“I know what it’s like to wait for it all to end,” he murmured. “It’s nor projecting. It’s—I want him to know. That I see him. Because you know what? That someone sees you sometimes is enough.” 

Steve braced his elbows on his knees, ducking down to catch Tony’s eyes. 

“I see you both.”

“Yeah, Steve, but you’ve only been here for two months,” Tony replied. “There was a whole lot of time before that where we had to find some or other reason to keep ourselves alive until we hit the next light-bulb. Someone telling you they care you’re breathing? It’s the difference between going to bed drunk and putting a bullet through the roof of your mouth.” 

Steve closed his eyes at that, face twisting in an expression of pain. He brought a hand up and rubbed his eyes, exhaling slowly. 

“Alright,” he said finally, shaking his head as he stood. “Just, remember to sleep and eat, okay? And not waffles,” he added, eyes glinting. “Real food, Tony.” 

“Real food for real boys, yessir,” Tony grinned, saluting. 

Steve rolled his eyes and left. 

Tony returned to his work, but his concentration was lost, and anyway wit was true—he really had forgotten to eat. Again. 

He hauled his ass upstairs to make himself a simple enough plate of spaghetti. Of course at that moment Clint showed up, because Clint always somehow managed to show up whenever someone was cooking something that might be remotely edible—no one ever got near the kitchen when Natasha was cooking, she was most likely making poison—and demanded to be fed. 

“What am I, your mother? Go annoy Thor.”

“Thor’s off to Asgard for some state dinner or other. I can never keep track of those.”

“Busy king,” Tony muttered, stirring the pasta. 

“Is he seriously—“

Clint cut himself off. An alarm was wailing loudly across the tower, and by the sound of it was the lab-levels alarm. Tony dropped the spoon and grabbed for one of the bracelets in his pocket as Clint leapt to his feet. 

JARVIS dropped a screen in front of Tony, presenting the image of one of the radiation labs in floor thirty-two. Tony breathed out a curse. 

The Hulk was loose. After more than two months of time without unwanted episodes, Bruce was out of control. 

“Fuck,” Clint said viciously. “Thor’s gone. How the hell do we contain him?”

Tony felt stuck in place. 

“I don’t—“

They watched in horror as the Hulk flew through a window and out into New York. 

“ _Shit_.” 

Tony took off to the penthouse, leaving Clint to go get his bow and arrows. 

“JARVIS, get Cap and Widow on the know, warn Fury, and drop word to the Police to keep an eye out. Are you tracking him?” 

“Yes, sir, he seems to be determinately heading to Central Park.”

“Shit! There’re tons of people there—“

“Indeed not, sir, as it is well past eleven o’clock. The area appears clear as per satellite imagining. It is not without reason to infer the Hulk is going there precisely because of that knowledge.” 

“What pushed him into it?” Tony asked as he stood on the assembling platform and allowed the robots to manipulate his body into the armor. 

“Frustration, or so it would appear,” JARVIS sounded unconvinced. “Doctor Banner was busying himself with the study of a pacemaker that would survive prolonged exposure to high levels of gamma radiation. The machine exploded. The damage was relatively little and contained, but—“

“It blew up in his face,” Tony finished darkly. 

“Doctor Banner seems to react unfavorably to pain,” JARVIS said, diplomatically. 

“No shit,” Tony grunted, taking off towards Central Park. As he flew he had the suit make continuous scan of the city to see how much damage the Hulk had delivered as he moved, but he found, to his surprise and relief, that it was minimal. He hadn’t gone on one of his raging smashing rampages, he just wanted a quiet place to calm down. 

Bruce refused to believe The Other Guy was to be reasoned with, but Tony didn’t agree. For one, the Hulk seemed to have some, if rather primitive, sense of humor, and he would obey orders when he felt like it. Mostly he didn’t feel like it. But when he did, he obeyed them well enough—especially if they came from Cap or Iron Man, both of which appeared to be his favorites. 

He didn’t like Thor, though. 

But that was okay because Tony didn’t like Thor all the time, either. For once, he had some sort of issue about opening doors. He just went through them. He wasn’t precisely the sharpest crayon in the box. Tony couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the fact he was a king. If Loki hadn’t been completely unbalanced and in serious need of Xanax, Tony might have believed he was the perfect king, since he was actually smart. Thor though—well. Thor meant well. Mostly. 

“Sir, the Hulk is up ahead, twelve o’clock.”

Tony slowed the suit up and scanned the area of Central Park he was hovering above. It was a densely forested area, the canopy thick enough Tony had no visual, but the infrared picked the Hulk up immediately. He was roaming the forest, randomly it seemed, lacking in any sort of purpose or destination. For now, he seemed calm enough. Tony resolved to wait it out. 

He informed SHIELD and the Police as to where the Hulk was, had them all prepare a wide perimeter to make sure not poor hapless soul happened upon the ranging monster, and hovered aimlessly for a while, running scans, keeping track. He took the opportunity to run diagnostics on the suit, on the surrounding satellites, on the various assorted ships and vessels on the water around Manhattan, on the state and structural integrity of the bridge, on the state and structural integrity of the Statue of Liberty—

“Doctor Banner has de-hulked, sir.”

“Iron Man,” Natasha’s voice came through the comm. “I have clothes for him.”

Tony veered off and picked up the clothes. Trusting Natasha and Clint to monitor the rest of the situation, Tony walked into the park, clothes in hand. 

He found Bruce sitting with his knees to his chest below an old tree, head hanging down. 

“Here,” he said softly, lifting his faceplate. “Don’t catch a chill.”

“It wouldn’t kill me,” Bruce said warily, taking the clothes and dressing quickly. 

“No, I guess not,” Tony sighed. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, just like always.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Let me rephrase that. Are you alright?”

Bruce paused, tugging on a dark grey sweater. More slowly, he finished putting it on and pulled it into place, before running a hand through his hair. 

“Sorry about the lab.”

“Nevermind the lab,” Tony waved a hand. “Why didn’t you tell me you were working on that, though? I know all about pacemakers. Pacemakers are my best friends.”

Bruce shrugged. “I didn’t want to be a bother. You’ve been busy.”

“Yeah, trying to work stuff out for you.” 

Bruce looked at him surprised. “Is that what you were doing?”

“That’s what I told you I was doing, Bruce, a month ago.”

“Oh. I, uh. I thought you’d moved on from that.”

“What?” Tony frowned. “Why would I do that? You know me. I get obsessed.”

Bruce looked genuinely embarrassed. “I figured you’d have gotten bored.”

Tony blinked at him some more. 

“So you think a Pacemaker might do the job?”

The doctor rubbed his eyes. “It might, if we can get one to survive gamma radiation.”

“We’ll work on it,” Tony said, putting his arm around Bruce’s arm and starting to walk. “Let’s go home in the meantime, ok?”

Bruce nodded. Natasha had intelligently called Happy down to the park to pick Bruce up, so Tony flew on his own back to the tower and got out of the suit and into fresh clothes before venturing down to Bruce’s floor. 

Except Bruce wasn’t there. He couldn’t possibly be in the labs again, they had been sealed off to ensure no radiation escaped. Tony decided to cut corners. 

“JARVIS? Where’s Bruce?”

“Doctor Banner is in the armory and training level, sir. Be warned, he is armed.”

Tony sighed and got on the elevator. 

The lights were off in the gymnasium and firing range. Tony wandered for a little while, idle enough, and then went to the changing room. Just as he’d thought, Bruce was there, sitting in the semi-dark with a nine millimeter automatic pistol in his hand. Bruce liked small places, liked to be contained in the safety of four walls and a ceiling. His tendency to become the Hulk somewhat made it impossible, forcing him out to wide, uncomplicated workspaces with lots of open air, where he actually felt unprotected. 

Bruce was a city boy, after all—and an army brat to boot, raised in the rigid structure of a military family. 

“You know that’s not going to work, right?”

Bruce braced his elbows on his knees. “Yeah. But sometimes it just feels good to hold it.”

Tony went over and sat next to him, stretching out his legs. “I’m not angry with you, you know.”

“You lost a lot of research. I ruined—“

“All the research is documented automatically by JARVIS. We didn’t lose anything but equipment, and all of that can be replaced. You didn’t break anything we can’t fix or buy again. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

There was a long pause. 

“Do you feel in balance again?” Tony asked softly. 

“I do.”

“You know, the big guy did practically no damage on his way out. He even waited it out in the park. No injuries, nothing.”

Bruce let his forehead drop to his hand. 

“You know, when I was a little kid, my parents were nearly never home, and when they were my dad was always down in the workshop doing one thing or other. I never got to see him at all. So I didn’t have much of a parental, you know, figure, or whatever. And most of the time I had girl nannies too so I had no idea how to face stuff like, shall we say, manly, and so on. And one afternoon when I was little I got it in my head that I absolutely had to, _I had to_ , learn to put a double-turbine engine on a car. It was a matter of life and death, I tell you. Someone had broken the sound barrier. I was falling behind. I was _horrified_.”

Bruce turned to look at him. “How old were you?”

“About, maybe twelve? My parents were alive. So anyway, I had this urge, and so I found my dad’s old Chevy Nova, and I disemboweled it, and I’m telling you, I had not the last idea what I was doing, but I found a screwdriver ad I took the engine out and I started banging around and making redesigns.”

“I bet your dad loved that,” Bruce said mildly, blinking because he clearly had no idea what Tony was getting at. Very probably he didn’t even have a point. Tony didn’t like silence, and tended to fill it with whatever came to mind. 

“He didn’t know right away. I made some modifications to the engine and then I convinced some workers to help me modify the main body carcass, and out a new engine and turbines on it. And then I got a fire-proof suit that was about twice my height and three times my girth—I jest you not, I rolled up the sleeves—and took off with the char to break the sound barrier on land in the desert.”

“The workers let you do that?”

Tony scoffed. “Like they could stop me. Anyway, I got the engine going—I was sitting on these huge encyclopedias and had stuff tied to my shoes to reach the pedals and everything—and took off. The car exploded—I’m not even exaggerating, it seriously exploded, the engine went up like a star and there was a mushroom cloud and everything. I survived out of pure undiluted luck.”

He shrugged. 

“And then my dad had to come look for me in the hospital. Bruce, that car had gone up in such a fantastically fabulous manner that not even the wreckage made sense, it was just twisted metal and charred sand and bits of glass. My dad _loved_ that car. I didn’t even know how to apologize, honestly, I couldn’t even explain why I’d even picked up that particular car, except maybe I guess because I liked the paint job—it was red and gold, isn’t that amusing—and I knew my dad was going to so angry at me.”

“Was he?”

“I uh, don’t know, actually,” Tony scratched his nose. “I ran from the hospital and took a bus all the way back home. So by the time my dad actually did catch up with me he was angry about so many shit I’d done that he couldn’t quite pick up the main one. He was _on fire_. I never saw him that incoherent, let me tell you. But in between all the murderous rage and all the accidental spitting, he told me what had nearly killed him was that I’d nearly gotten myself flattened. The car didn’t matter, or the hours of work he’d lost, or anything else… he just wanted me to be safe.”

A long pause. 

Tony shifted. “Not that I’m, you know, judging your dad or anything. I mean I bet your dad was great.”

“Except for the part where he hated me and neglected me?”

“Except for that part,” Tony muttered. 

“It’s fine,” Bruce shrugged. “Well, maybe not, but, you know. It’s getting there. And I’m not sure _you_ knew what you were going about with that anecdote, but I think you meant to say that you don’t care what I wreck so long as I’m alright. And I am. But thanks. For the concern.”

“Yeah. I care. That you’re fine,” Tony sat up awkwardly, scratching his neck. “I could hug you?”

Bruce grinned, “Thank you. I know how much that takes from you.”

“Shut up,” mumbled Tony, feeling the way his cheeks heated. Bruce chuckled, quietly as Bruce always did. 

“And put that thing away,” Tony added, waving his hand at the pistol. “It’s creepy when you walk into a dark room and there’s a guy crouched in a corner with a gun. You might get a teethful of vibranium shield by accident.”

Bruce laughed, “Steve would be the last to react rashly, you know that.”

“I don’t know that,” Tony countered breezily. “He’s a judgy, judgy little person. I like him, but he’s got judgy eyes.” 

Bruce waved him away with his free hand, sliding the safety securely on his pistol. 

It wasn’t perfect. Tony forgot to sleep and eat, and Thor broke the doors, and Natasha and Clint stalked the hallways and corridors like they were expecting at any moment to find you doing something illegal and were ready to sell you out to Fury in no time flat, and Steve fried microwaves because he didn’t know that the milk carton had metal lining inside, even though Tony had told him three times. 

And Bruce. Was Bruce. 

But it worked. And it was the closest thing to overall happy that Bruce had had in years.


End file.
